


The Crimson Moon

by SwirlsOfBlueJay



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Dark, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-11
Updated: 2012-03-11
Packaged: 2017-11-01 19:19:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/360328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SwirlsOfBlueJay/pseuds/SwirlsOfBlueJay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are weird(er) goings on in Mystic Falls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Crimson Moon

There are weird(er) goings on in Mystic Falls. This was written in response to a fandomaid bid, for [](http://waltzmatildah.livejournal.com/profile)[**waltzmatildah**](http://waltzmatildah.livejournal.com/)

 

Caroline organises; it’s what she does. So even while focusing on all the other issues (i.e. Stefan), she takes the time to research, and begins making a list. She’s smarter than people think, and she’s determined to protect her friends and family.

 

\----

 

Elena goes to the boarding house with a broken arm on Thursday.

“Who did that?” Damon demands angrily, already on the alert, and almost reflexively raises his wrist to his teeth. 

“No, Damon, this was a normal non-supernatural accident; I’m going to let it heal in the normal non-supernatural way,” Elena replies.

Damon scoffs, but lets it go for the time being.

Elena gives Caroline a significant look when she’s sure Damon isn’t looking.

\----

 

Caroline’s not sure whether Damon is oblivious to her list, or just doesn’t care. He probably sees it as a problem to be dealt with after the fact. Caroline would rather be pre-emptive; it’s a lot harder, but hopefully will result in less bloodshed.

\----

 

He’s one of Elena’s friends; the boy who broke her arm, he’s called Ed. Elena is asking Caroline all the questions now, and there’s guilt written all over her face; for not bothering before with someone else who was also supposed to be her friend.

“It’s not like your plate wasn’t overflowing as it was; with all the doppelganger stuff and everything, and it’s not like you didn’t know I was there,”  Caroline says, in what she hopes is a soothing tone (she’s reminded yet again of how much she misses Stefan).

“I know,” Elena says, guilt only easing off her face with force.

“Tell me everything you know,” Elena says with determination, throwing herself into this.

She shows Elena the DVD, her research, and her list.

Some days Caroline thinks she misses Stefan more than Elena does; it’s not something she would say out loud anymore.

\----

 

Elena insists on having the conversation somewhere Damon won’t look for them. Caroline’s pretty sure Damon isn’t oblivious. He was best friends with George; he would know that the guy only had daughters (it was George’s brother’s children who carried the family name). 

They go to Ed’s house. Elena sits beside him, and she sits a few feet away on a beanbag chair. She’s there for moral support, and to plug any gaps in information, but also a little to make sure he doesn’t run off.

Elena is all soft caressing words, and soothing touches, and talking around the point with stories, and Caroline knows Elena will still lay the facts out bare when she gets to the point, but Caroline is hungry and she doesn’t want to wait; it’s probably for the best anyway. She lets the words tumble clumsily around her mouth like glass marbles clanging together in a too high pitch.

“You’re a werewolf.” 

Eddie guffaws with laughter.

“It’s true,” Elena adds softly.

He just looks at them like they’re crazy. After talking in circles for half an hour, Caroline shows him her fangs. Eddie plasters himself to the opposite side of the room.

“This is insane,” he breathes in a harsh whisper.

\----

 

Caroline doesn’t help Eddie for long; Elena already has the phases of the moon for the next year memorised, and she’s beginning to feel that out-of-place third wheel sensation that she always loathed. But Elena does start working with her on the list; every person in Mystic Falls with the werewolf gene. The names are written in anagram, and locked in a safe. The list could do a lot of damage in the wrong hands, Elena says she’s paranoid, but Elena hasn’t felt Damon’s hands on her like Caroline has.

Damon saved her life, and she cares about him, but she knows he still has no qualms about killing those he perceives as threats.

They go around warning people on the list, doing what perhaps their ancestors should have. They explain everything; from the propensity for aggression to the need to be careful to not trigger the curse. Tyler sometimes joins them. One day Damon tells them they’re being crazy, because of course he has known all along.

“We know,” Caroline replies, “but it’s all we can do.”

“No, it’s really not,” Damon replies.  

\----

 

“This is your fault, and now I have to clean up your mess,” Damon says, when Jeffrey Lockwood-Hamilton triggers the curse.

“No, don’t hurt him; I’ll take care of it.”

“Because that worked out so well last time.”

“That was Klaus’ fault, not mine.”

“Fine,” Damon sighs.

Caroline’s still Miss Mystic Falls and she can’t forget the guy who helped get her there; the guy who danced every step perfectly, even though he didn’t know her; even though her winning shouldn’t have mattered to him.

She wonders how he triggered it. It turns out he’s not the only one to have; and they quickly realise this is a lot bigger than anything Caroline or Elena did.

\----

 

Mystic Falls bursts into a pit of aggression, and a sea of yellow eyes. A guy splits a head; a girl throws a table, a pig-tailed eight year old twists a bike into a wreck.

Those are the sensible sounding ones.

Damon ticks them off on the list in his head; looks for absent deaths. There aren’t even enough missing persons to cover it.

\----

 

“All of them are turning with or without the trigger,” Damon confirms.

“It has to be Klaus,” Elena says.

“Whatever caused it, there’s a full moon soon, and unless we stop them there’ll be a massive pack of wolves gunning for us,” Damon points out.  

“We’re not killing anyone,” Elena says sternly.

“We might have to,” Damon tells her.

“We’ll find another way.”

\----

 

Caroline’s eyes lift from the grimoire she’s reading, and she takes a moment to consider the scene in front of her.

Bonnie and Elena (and herself); sitting on the floor, surrounded by books. The same as dozens of study dates, except completely different.

It leaves a bittersweet taste in her mouth and she sighs.

As always they’re looking for an answer; and just like always they’ll find one. It matters more, but maybe it doesn’t matter at all; maybe Klaus will bring the end, and saving everyone now won’t make a difference.

Caroline blinks, catching the cushion flying at her.

“Hey, positive thinking, remember,” Bonnie says, and Elena nods in agreement. Caroline smiles.

\----

 

There’s knocking on Elena’s front door. Caroline and Bonnie follow her as she moves to open it. Life has made them cautious; the streets are full of monsters with no self control.

Elena wants to say no one comes round anymore, it would sound poetic but it would be a lie; too many people still come around.

She wonders how worn down she is when she opens the door to a hallucination.

“Elena,” Jenna’s voice is soft, consumed with emotion.

“How...” Elena asks; she needs this to be real; just this one thing.

“I don’t know,” Jenna says; fear and determination war in her eyes like play-fighting lion cubs.

Bonnie and Caroline are just as surprised. At least she’s not the only one seeing this.

“Can I come in?” Jenna asks.

Elena’s mouth is open, when Bonnie grabs her wrist.

“Wait!” Bonnie exclaims.

Elena’s glare snaps fire-rich at Bonnie.

“Come in.”

\----

 

The three of them are watching Jenna. She’s all edges and corners, fingers curling ill-fittingly around a large mug of tea. When she begins to jitter, Caroline leaves without a word; and comes back a few minutes later with a blood bag in hand.  

\----

 

Parents keep coming by, but not the ones that matter (it hurts to admit).

“It’s all a consequence of the curse being broken; nature’s balance trying to correct itself,” Isobel explains, “like an allergic reaction; the world’s immune system  is over-reaching; tearing itself apart at the seams.”  

\----

 

There’s no solution; only the truth. It’s easier to convince people than it should be, like Buffy’s High School graduation; everyone knows there’s something _off_ about Mystic Falls. The werewolves chain themselves up, and the humans lock their doors and drink vervain.

The moon is bright in the sky, newly undead vampires roam the streets, sensitive ears all hear the wolves howling. Caroline stays in the Boarding house with Elena, Damon, and Jenna. Now all there is to do is to wait.

The werewolves are new at this; there are inevitable mistakes.   

This is only the locusts; a symptom of a dying world.

\----

 

The first place Fredrick goes when he’s undead again is the boarding house, because he’s an idiot.

Damon is enough of a match for him, but with Caroline and Elena there also, Fredrick quickly realises it’s only going to end one way.

When he runs away, Damon immediately goes after him. Fredrick hurt Stefan, and Fredrick must pay, Elena can almost feel the vengeance vibrating off of him, fear is renewed at the thought of what will happen when they find Klaus. Damon can be an idiot too at times.

Caroline can hear the wolves in the distance, getting closer, closer, air crackling too calmly before the storm.

“I’m going to check if Damon needs a hand, I’ll be back in a minute.”

“I’ll come too,” Elena insists.

Caroline dashes away, forgoing the argument.

\----

 

Fredrick is lying dead in the grass, and there’s a werewolf gnashing its teeth with Damon in its sights.

“Go away!” Damon snaps at her, focused on the wolf.

Caroline says nothing; the déjà vu this scene invokes is as obvious as it is unsettling.

The wolf leaps. Time distorts, spittle flies from clashing teeth. She blurs across the street, pushing Damon out of the way. A sharp pain engulfs her leg. She screams.

\----

 

She has maybe a day of ordinary; her leg feels no worse than a particularly vicious bee sting, but her friends linger awkwardly in her space with incomplete sentences on their lips. Caroline wonders if she should be wearing a sign saying ‘dead vampire walking’.

They’ve been searching for Klaus since Stefan left; her optimism is too blunted to think they’ll find him now.

\----

 

A part of Caroline feels guilty, like maybe she wished this on herself. She always hoped her life would have a visible expiration date; to at last have the attention she always craved. It’s less unappealing than she thought it would be; having Bonnie and Elena and Tyler here, all looking after her.

Tyler gives her a mug of French coffee, his hands shift comfortingly over her smaller ones; but she remains cold to the touch. Coffee circles irrelevantly through her veins as though it knows what’s coming and has given up the fight.

\----

 

Elena gives her a firm hug, unrestrained and unwary; Caroline knows this is why she loves Elena.

She imagines they’re just cheerleaders again; imagines they’re the children they were only months before. Thinks maybe she fell off the top of the human pyramid and broke every bone in her body.

She hears old ridiculous words stumble from her mouth, and cringes in self-consciousness at the wrongness she can’t fix. But Elena holds her, grounds her, as always. Elena makes her feel secure despite her foolish words. As she returns to the present, a part of Caroline is glad that if she has to die so young; at least she got the chance to grow up first.

“Thank you for everything,” Caroline says, voice jerking like out of tune piano keys.

“Thank you for everything,” Elena replies.

“This is all so icky,” she says, even when the pain ebbs she’s still too sweaty and sticky to appreciate it.

“Let’s watch the notebook,” Elena says.

As they watch the film, there are a few minutes here and there when she manages to forget; to feel marginally better. Caroline wonders what she did to deserve a friend like Elena.

She never mistakes Elena for the woman who killed her but she does wonder where the wild child of before has gone.

 

\----

 

Damon drops in, in the middle of whatever he’s doing to find Klaus.

“I got you some blood bags,” Damon says, clearly trying to infuse the words with every hidden meaning they could possibly have.

“Thanks.”

“Had to do something to stop you from devouring my entire stash,” Damon grins half-heartedly.

Something about the smirk flips something, and everything in her mind goes blurry.

“Get away from me!” She yells, backing him against the wall.

Damon doesn’t try to stop her or push her away. He gives her a contrite look, eyelids dipping before rising again.

After a minute, her arms drop away, and he slowly leaves.

“I’ll get the care-bear to come and handle your craziness,” Damon says, and it doesn’t have a hint of the insult it’s meant to be.  

 

\----

 

Bonnie comes after all her spells fail; there’s only one cure for a werewolf bite. Sits tentatively on the edge of Caroline’s bed.

“I’ll keep trying,” she says with determination.

“I know,” Caroline replies smiling; it’s enough that Bonnie’s trying so hard for _her_.

 

\----

 

Her mother comes when she eventually finds out; and enters flustered and confused.

“But you’re...not supposed to get sick.”

“Werewolf bites are fatal to vampires,” Caroline states simply.

She squeezes Caroline’s hand as though if she holds on tight enough, Caroline will have to stay. Then her mother sits down in the chair beside her bed, and _stays_ there.

“I never wanted this life for you,” mum says softly.

Caroline can’t help but laugh dryly; unfortunately the dry laugh turns to a very wet _bloody_ cough. Her mother cleans her up efficiently; just like when Caroline was a small child.

“What was so funny?”

“You’ve said that before.”

There’s a moment of confusion, before realisation; “before, when you made me forget.”

“Yeah.”

 

\----

 

She lies still; even miniscule moments shooting torrents of agony through her. She glances at her mother, Elena, and Bonnie, through half open eyes. They’re a comfort. She has already said enough to fill up many letters of goodbyes, but thinks maybe she should muster something epic for the end. It’s too much effort.

“Tell people I said something awesome,” she quips instead.

“Sure Caroline,” Elena says, with tears in her laughter.

“I’m so tired,” Caroline says, lips tasting salty from the sweat.

“Rest,” Bonnie and Elena say with simultaneous softness. And her mother lifts the duvet up over her.

She lets her eyes fall closed. Her thoughts hazily drift around her friends and family; from her mother and father (and Steven), to Elena and Bonnie, Matt and Tyler, even Damon, and finally to Stefan.

Stefan, who held her close and said he wouldn’t let anything happen to her.

She misses Stefan.

Caroline falls into a deep sleep, and never wakes up again.

 

\----

 

The next day a package is delivered to the boarding house, it’s a box filled with jam jars of Klaus’ blood. There’s a note attached in Stefan’s scrawl; ‘thought you might need this.’  
  



End file.
